Obligation
by blinkblink
Summary: MK. "Almost a year ago now, Inspector, you did me a favour. I've come to repay it. You need to leave the country now, you and your daughter." When the nets begin to close around the Black Org., Kid makes a visit. Follows Slip and Fall, but stands alone.
1. Before

Disclaimer: Don't own Magic Kaitou/Detective Conan, which is a good thing because I can't write mysteries to save my life.

Notes: If I had the staying power to write a long fic, I'd love to write one for the end of Detective Conan/Magic Kaitou, which would be called _Reichenbach_. I don't, though, so it would only turn out badly, and besides I'm sure better people than I have already been over that ground. So here instead are a couple of interlude scenes from Magic Kaitou side of the non-existent _Reichenbach_. They take place in the same continuity as _Slip and Fall_, but it's not necessary to have read that.

--

Inspector Nakamori Ginzo shuffled back into his office, absently kicking the door closed behind him, and dropped his briefcase beside it. He switched the overhead light on with an inattentive strike and took a step towards his desk, forgotten file sitting on the middle of the scratched wooden surface. And stopped. His high-backed swivel chair, acquired years ago after a week of back twinges, was turned away from the door. Over the top of it peaked a rounded line of white silk. Before he had time to react, the chair turned slowly on silent bearings. Kaitou Kid, sitting with one leg crossed in loose ease, smiled at the inspector and snapped his fingers. Behind the policeman, the door clicked locked.

Nakamori turned to glance at the lock, right hand already reaching into his jacket for his sidearm. He opened his mouth, and was cut off by Kid's self-assured tones. "Don't bother calling for help – I'll be gone before they break the door down." Kid made no move to follow through on this though, instead sitting perfectly still. He watched the inspector with bright eyes, shadowed by the brim of his hat.

"What do you want?"

"Almost a year ago now, Inspector, you did me a favour." Without breaking eye contact, Kid raised a hand to brush against his right collarbone. Nakamori knew without seeing it that the skin under the thief's perfect clothes would be marred by a puckered bullet wound. "I've come to repay it."

"Repay – how? By turning yourself in?" Nakamori took a step closer, and although the Kid didn't shift position his form tensed just slightly, muscle tightening under perfectly pressed silk. His smile revealed the tips of white teeth.

"Of course not, Inspector. That would be a poor repayment for your own good deed. No. I've brought you advice." Kid's eyes narrowed, and the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Its disappearance revealed cold, hard intensity. "You need to leave the country. You, and your daughter. Take the next plane abroad. You have relatives living in Korea and Thailand. Go there, the farther the better."

"How-"

"It doesn't matter how I know." Kid spoke in quick, sharp works, cutting him off cleanly. "In a very short time, your life and your daughter's will both be in danger, for as long as you remain in Japan." Kid was a master thief, and he could spin a lie more believable than most facts. But, he rarely did. And tonight, he seemed horribly sincere. Sincerity with the cold clarity of a single frozen branch held against the moon.

"Why. What's going to happen?" Nakamori interpreted the pause as uncertainty, since nothing in the Kid's face moved, and then gave the thief a push. "There's no way I'm leaving the country without a damn good reason. For all I know you just want me out of the way so you can pull off some new heist."

Kid didn't smile, didn't even grin, and that was worrying. Instead he leaned forward, just slightly, casting a longer shadow over his face. In the darkness his eyes glinted like a cat's, proud and feral.

"The last time we talked like this – really talked," the Kid's tone separated this conversation bluntly from all their night time bickering – Kid's haughty taunting and Nakamori's fiery rebuttals – and categorized them all as silly and meaningless without a word. "I told you I had a goal."

"I remember. A goal that you'd retire after completing."

"I'm very close. Several people have been working – separately – towards this goal for a long time. We all have our reasons. Many of us have paid high prices. _All_ of us are risking high stakes. Higher than only our own lives."

"Kaitou Kid," said Nakamori, grimly, vehemence making the distinction between the two Kids. "You're after the men who killed him."

Kid, the new Kid, shrugged, agreement with a painful truth rather than denial.

"And you've almost found them. So call in the police. Tell me, I can pass it on. Hell, I can probably even – "

"No!" Kid's voice was sharp as a whip, so sharp Nakamori almost flinched. "No. You cannot tell anyone, _anyone_. Not your squad, not your commander, not your friends, not your daughter. _No one_. These people are hardly even criminals. They are to criminals what trained soldiers are to children playing with water guns. They have men in the highest reaches of society, and in the Japanese police, _and_ in foreign and international policing organizations. No one is above suspicion. And if they believe you suspect them, you will die. Just like that. Just like Kaitou Kid. Just like a hundred other people. Killing means nothing to them. Do you understand? Simply by telling you of their existence, I have put you in extreme danger."

"So why did you? You've always been careful with the lives of others. One of your – few – good points." Nakamori was aware that his tone was unconvincing, even to himself.

"Because in a couple of days you'll be in danger anyway, when I begin to take a more active role in their destruction."

"Because I know you? Whoever these people are, they should be giving me medals! I've been chasing you – the Kaitou Kid – most of my life!"

"Yes. And you haven't caught him. For as long as you've been the police officer assigned to the capture of Kaitou Kid, he's gone free. And, as long as you're on the case no one else has the chance to try."

"Are you suggesting I _let you go_?" Nakamori's face reddened as he barked out the words. "That I _protect you_?"

Kid tilted his head slightly. "Of course not, Inspector. I know you try your very best. But others might not see it in the same way. It is possible – maybe even more than possible – that you could be seen as an … ally. A friend to Kaitou Kid. These people would not hesitate in using any possible leverage against me. That might mean you, or it might mean your daughter. Or maybe they wouldn't even bother to use you. Maybe they would just kill you, on the slim chance that you might possibly be associated with me. That is the kind of people I – we – are dealing with. I can take care of myself. You-"

"I can't? I'm twice your age, kid! I've been a cop for longer than you've been alive, don't think I couldn't take you-"

"In a fair fight, Inspector, I'm sure you could. Can you dodge a bullet? Can you survive being pushed off a building, or roll under a car? _Can your daughter_? You need to leave, for both your sakes. Look after her. That's your job, isn't it? Your real job. The one you've been forgetting about for all these years while you chased after me instead."

Nakamori strode forward and slammed his palms down on his desk, rattling the drawers. "What do you know about it? How dare you say that – you! You've been goading me into chasing you for – "

"For longer than I've been alive? And you're still falling for it, twenty years later?" Kid closed his eyes and turned his head slightly. Nakamori heard him exhale sharply. "That doesn't matter. You're right, I don't have the right to criticise the way you deal with your family. But as someone who almost traded my life for hers, I think I have the right to ask you to do what you need to now to look after her."

Slowly, Kid turned back to face the Inspector head on, and raised his head until the brim no longer shadowed his face. Even in the harsh light of the overhead lamp which highlighted the slightest uncertainties in expressions, Nakamori saw only unbreakable, unwavering determination. The kind of determination which could fuel a 20 year chase. He sighed.

"How will I know when it's safe to come back?"

"It'll be over in a week, either way. If we succeed, you'll hear about it in the papers." Kid shrugged light-heartedly, although his eyes were grim. "If we fail, you won't."

"And I won't hear from you again, either."

"No. If we fail, it's extremely unlikely anyone will." Kid let out his breath in a long, slow sigh, relaxing back into the chair for a second. Then, in one smooth movement, he stood. "Well, then, Inspector, I'll be off. You should be, too. Look after yourself, and Aoko." It only took him a few steps to reach the window.

"Kid – you're sure – if…" Nakamori stopped. Kid, in the middle of sliding the window pane open, glanced back over his right shoulder. His monocle caught the light and masked his face. "Good luck."

Kid's lips twitched up into a smile, but without the expressive lines of his eyes it could have been either a careless grin or a grimace. Then he inclined his head, shifting the light, and Nakamori could see his eyes were closed, and the only thing he could read on the thief's face was a kind of resignation. Tired resignation.

"Goodbye, Inspector."

And then he was gone.


	2. And After

The first thing Nakamori did, arriving at his wayward nephew's creaking house in Thailand smelling of sweet wood and cigar smoke, was arrange for the delivery of the major Japanese newspapers. The second was to forbid Aoko from leaving the house on her own. The third was light a cigarette, and down a neat whisky.

For five days it felt like all he did was sit on the slowly rotting deck listening to the constant chucking of the birds in the trees and chain smoking while waiting for the next day's paper. On the sixth day, ignoring Aoko's ranting about having done nothing at all in their vacation, he booked a flight back to Japan, sheet of newsprint clutched tight in his hand.

The title page was splashed with bold font and several photographs of teenage boys. The main header read "'Black Organisation' toppled by teenage detectives" and went on to give a description of said organisation, currently thought to be behind dozens of murders, robberies and financial crimes as well as hundreds of other illegalities. There were several articles detailing the amazing work of one Kudou Shin'ichi from Beika, assisted primarily by an Osakan kid, Hattori Heiji. There were the beginnings of several international articles, continued in later pages, on the arrest of 'Black Organization' members across the globe. And, squeezed into one small corner, was a tiny picture of a white triangle in a black sky and the headline: Kaitou Kid sighted in Tokyo. The article that followed, only two paragraphs, explained that the Kid had been spotted by several citizens flying over the city, despite not having issued a theft notice, and indeed no jewel had as of yet been reported stolen. And finally that one witness had come forward claiming he saw the glider crash, although no evidence had been recovered to support the statement.

The lights, when Nakamori finally reached his office seven hours later, were turned out. As he had left them. He turned them on with a heavy hand, breath held tight in burning lungs. The chair behind his desk was swivelled around, back facing him. He had no memory of which way it had been facing when he hurried out a week ago to collect Aoko and book a flight from a public phone.

He shut the door behind him with a quiet click and locked it himself; the bolt slid home without complaint. "Hello?" His voice was gruff from a week of constant smoking.

Slowly, the chair swivelled around.

The first thing Nakamori noticed was that the Kid's top hat was gone, and that there was a crack running through the frame of his monocle. His dark hair, standing rebelliously on edge, seemed to the Inspector to be slightly singed at the edges. His face was gray and lined. He was slumped back in the chair, in what was either extreme relaxation or a state approaching collapse. Only his eyes were near to their usual brightness, shining in the head of a person who in all other respects appeared completely exhausted and quite possibly injured. "Hello, Inspector. I see you heard the news." His voice was nearly perfect, only a slight edge suggesting a throat tightened by overcompensation for tired vocal chords, or simple pain.

"Kid – are you – " Nakamori took a step forward and paused as Kid's eyes flashed. The thief didn't move otherwise.

"I'm fine, Inspector. Perhaps just a few too many late nights."

"Assisting in the capture of the, what are they calling it, that Black Organisation?"

"As good a guess as any."

"The newspaper said you crashed your glider."

"I believe it actually said one witness reported _thinking_ I crashed my glider. I do read the papers, Inspector. Especially if there's a chance of my being mentioned." He gave a cheeky grin, which held a hint of a grimace.

"Did you?"

"Did I what? Read the papers? I just told you – "

Refusing to rise to the bait, Nakamori ploughed through the words, "Crash your glider."

"Of course not." Under Nakamori's hard stare, he loosened slightly. "However, I may have had a slightly bumpier landing than usual…"

"So you crashed it."

"'Any landing you can walk away from is a good one,' Inspector."

"You look like you crawled away from it. On three limbs. Through a mine field."

"Uphill both ways? Really, that's a little unkind. As a matter of fact, I _did_ walk away from it. Actually, ran. If I hadn't, I doubt I would be here in your delightful company now."

Nakamori opened his mouth to make a cutting reply to the Kid's teasing tone, and then stopped. Because although he was trying to turn them into a lie with his voice, his eyes said the words were true. That he had almost been killed, again. Goddamn reckless kid. Goddamn reckless Kid.

"And now?" Nakamori spat out, watching the thief shift in a lithe movement that was nevertheless stiffer than his usual.

"Now? Now what, do you mean? Or now, am I safe? I'm certainly safe, Inspector. You don't need to worry about me."

"I'm not sure about that," groused Nakamori, but Kid wasn't really listening anyway. He was staring over Nakamori's shoulder, eyes looking a long way into the distance. Or, possibly, the past.

"As for now what…" In the hush of the office, it seemed to Nakamori that Kid was waiting for the words as much as he was. After a moment, he found them. "Now Kaitou Kid performs his biggest trick ever. He makes himself disappear." Any veils dropped from his voice, confidence and arrogance disappearing along with the simpler underlying changes Kid always made to project his voice to fill a room and to maintain the same constant amount of energy behind the words. He spoke in a near whisper, more to himself than Nakamori.

"And that's it? No more Kaitou Kid, no more thefts, no more midnight chases? What will you _do_?" The clear unvoiced thought: _What will I do?_

Kid shrugged, attention still not entirely on the here and now. "I'll go back to being … who I am when I'm not Kaitou Kid. Live my other life. There's plenty of jobs where the Kid's talents'll come in handy. Kaitou Kid was never who I was. He was just my night time job. Like a part time job, but with better wages and worse hours." Kid smiled, another new expression. Nostalgia.

A moment later it disappeared from his face, and his eyes snapped into focus, staring straight at Nakamori. "And you, Inspector? Now that the Kaitou Kid Task Force's on the way out? What will you do?"

But Nakamori was staring, fists locked tight, shoulders tense, breath coming short and strong. "_Only a night job_? I've been chasing you for my _entire career_. I gave up my life, my family, my pride, my self-respect to chase the Kaitou Kid, and you're telling me it was only a game to you? That you'll just quit and it won't matter? Easy as taking of your damn hat?" He shoved his hand under the back of his coat and drew out his handcuffs, held them tight enough to whiten his skin. "I should arrest you right the hell now, throw you in prison. Make those twenty years worth something for me, since you don't seem to give a rat's ass."

Kid's eyes widened in shock, and he sat up in the chair, faltering when it swiveled unexpectedly under him. "Hey, hey, now, Inspector, I-"

"You what? You were kidding? You were lying? You were-"

"I was doing a job." Kid, surprise controlled, stared at the handcuffs with calm eyes. "I was doing a job. Like you. A job I had to do. Wearing a dead man's face, a dead man's clothes, to finish his work. Make the world a better place, maybe. Help a couple of people, probably. Stop some evil sons of bitches, certainly. Yeah, I had fun sometimes. I got shot sometimes, too, for a vendetta I inherited. This was never what I wanted to be. It was what I _had_ to be, filling in a place until the work was done. Now it's done. Now Kaitou Kid can rest in peace. And his ghost can leave this kid alone."

"And the Inspector he's been haunting all these years?"

"The Inspector can go back to doing what he's supposed to be doing. Protecting the public. Chasing down guys who are meaner and sleazier and more violent than the Kid, and putting them where they belong. I'd like to think you can believe me when I say that if you're trying to clean up the world there's a lot of people who should be arrested before Kaitou Kid. And for a guy who's been chasing the best thief in the world for 20 years, well, it should be easy pickings, right Inspector?"

"Easy pickings?"

"Right. So you choose. Are you gonna keep chasing the Kid, who won't even be stealing anymore? Or are you going to go and use your talents to do some real good?" Kid eyed him steadily, not a single flicker in his gaze, until Nakamori lowered the shining cuffs and then slowly slipped them back into their place. The thief's face split into a grin "Knew you'd see the right idea!"

"Don't get too cocky. One foot wrong, and I'll track you down."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

Relationship returned to something like normalcy, they both fell into silence. Kid, shaking himself gently, put his hands out and levered himself up. He stood with just a slight forwards stoop, left arm held a touch stiffly. His steps over to the window, though, were confident and regular. He put a gloved hand on the thin glass and slowly slid it open, cool night air flowing in.

"Kid?"

"Yes, Inspector?

"Why are you here? You knew I'd read the paper, I wouldn't have come back otherwise. You didn't need to tell me it's over."

Kid turned all the way around this time, leaning back against the bottom of the window sill. His hair drifted gently in the breeze, moving like a slow tide.

"Of course not." The thief slid up to sit on the window sill, more a shift of his weight than a hop. His eyes were bright again, shining like the moon in the dark sky behind him. "I came to say goodbye." That cold seriousness again, a frozen lake in an empty land.

"Goodbye?"

"For me, and for m– the old man." He waited a second, as if to let the feeling sink in, before smiling. The carefree arrogance wasn't there, though, just a simple sincere smile "After all, it's not much of a disappearing trick if no one knows you did it on purpose, is it?"

Nakamori, slightly baffled by it all, couldn't muster a reply.

"Well, then, Inspector. Happy hunting. And goodbye."

"But – wait –"

Kid gave a jaunty wave of a white-gloved hand, and tipped his weight backwards, out the window to disappear in a flutter of white. Jaw gaping, Nakamori rushed forward to stare down at the pavement ten storeys below. There was no sign of the glider, no triangle of white soaring off into the sky. But, there was nothing on the well-lit pavement below, either. Of course. Because when Kaitou Kid meant to disappear, he did. Completely.

Nakamori leaned forward, resting his elbows on the thin window sill, and stared out into the night sky. The white moon, all alone, shone in the darkness.

After a while, Nakamori returned to his desk, sat down, and pulled out a pile of forms and a blank piece of paper. He stared at them for a few minutes, pen in hand. Then he shoved the still-blank papers back into his drawer, closed the window and turned out the light.

Nakamori Ginzo locked the door behind him, walked out of the quiet stationhouse, and went home to his daughter.


End file.
